Dear diary,
Just today I noticed something curious: mice are known to squeal, and also pigs are known to squeal. From this similarity, I deduce that these two animals share a common ancestor.
This reminds me again of ancient Egypt, which I mentioned briefly yesterday — the place has been on my mind a lot lately, because it’s always on my mind, and the concept “lately” is contained by the concept “always”.
I wanna focus on power: how a nation acquires it. Not political power but energy to make things go, like how boats run on steam, or trains run on coal.
The ancient Egyptians differ from modern Christians in that they do not gain their divine power by eating their God. There is also no evidence that they stole the specific power of each of their enemies by defeating them in “big boss battles”, as does the titular character in Mega Man 2 (the video game released in 1988 for the Nintendo Entertainment System). No, the ancient Egyptians knew that the most efficient way to harness power is to siphon oil from the earth; this is how they ended up fueling their electric plant. For, as I said, they neither ate their gods’ flesh, nor drank their gods’ blood, nor slew their gods to absorb their holy talents; but instead they packaged their gods inside sarcophagi: caskets made of precious metals that conduct electricity.
The juice would flow from the grid of the electric company into the coffin-like enclosure; and the living corpse within would serve as a colander, simultaneously removing impurities from the electrical stream while “flavoring” it — think of hot water being passed thru a drip-coffee filter. Then, because the energy had such a strong taste, all the robots that populated that land would keep working hard all day to meet the needs of their human populace.
Moreover, the pharoah-gods in their suspended state of alt-life were able to bless the farming yield: for a byproduct of the above process was that their body would emit a super-dimensional glow, which heightened the consciousness of the vegetation, thus making the plants more efficient at bearing fruit, while rendering their roots more palatable. Behold, if you were to eat a potato from ancient Egypt, you wouldn’t even need to add any type of seasoning to it.
So this is how Egypt became the first country to solve the problem of slavery: they used a mechanized labor force powered by petroleum-based love.
But what I really wanted to discuss today is the vehicle that they created to clean up their environment. Recall that I began this essay by mentioning the evolution of pigs and mice. Well, ancient Egypt, being an oil-dependent nation, installed pipelines everywhere — these facilitated the transport of the crude — however, as all adults eventually discover, pipelines leak; therefore it became necessary to invent a new type of contraption that could clean up the oil-drenched landscape, otherwise their crops and livestock would taste less delectable; and the sea creatures that populate the Nile River would no longer have clean red water to swim in but thick black gunk, so they’d get confused and assume that permanent nighttime had settled the land, and that its overlord, the Great Eclipse, had returned for good; thus all the subaqueous forms of life would be in danger of slipping into a state of hibernation which could take eons to manufacture a computer subtle enough to wake them up from.
Yes, a wise nation would rather avoid drowning in oil spills; and ancient Egypt was among the wisest of nations; so they built a contrivance that looked like a giant square truck, which stood upon four stout barrel-legs and had a huge accordion snout. This latter appendage would constantly suck up into its soul-shaped reservoir all the oil that had escaped.
Now, since my theme is evolution, let’s consider how this appliance morphed over time. It started out vast and rectangular, but the ancient Egyptian engineers soon learned how to smooth out its sharp angles and make its components smaller and more efficient. When they were done implementing their improvements, the thing was very tiny and soft; they even covered it in fuzzy fur, and installed a pink tongue.
So the ancient Enviro-Cleaner became the modern kitten. (Such adorableness from such homely origins!) Now, instead of sucking up oil spills, they drink milk from saucers. And, instead of using a trunk-like tube to vacuum, they just lap up the liquid by licking it. As their manufacture was both labor-intensive and cost-prohibitive, the nation of Egypt could only afford to build one initial unit; but that unwieldy prototype has spawned multitudes: nowadays there are countless kitty-cats roaming every neighborhood. And they never grow up, so there’s no danger of modernity being overrun with leonine demons like the sphinx, whose twin shadows block the tree of life. None of these nuisance beasts exist, because the engineers were able to program the breed’s internal processor to “Eschew evil”. And that’s why all cats are cute, and why they’re the stars of their ongoing documentary film titled The Internet.
Also puppies are pretty cute too. I know a guy who goes online solely to look at puppies. But I can’t explain how that brand came to be. Their evolutionary path is apparently distinct from that of any of the afore-listed sovereigns: pigs, mice, or kittens. It could be that they were fabricated by the Dutch. Perhaps the old Dutchmasters needed a quick-fix to help dispose of all their radioactive waste.
No, but that sounds more like where goats might’ve come from. Did you ever gaze directly into the eyes of a goat? If so, then you know that goats are basically kittens that, in defiance of their source code, accomplished adolescence.
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